Outback Steakhouse — Restaurant in Brea

It was a very disappointing meal. We wanted New York steak and lamb, outback no longer offers New York steak or lamb. So a 22 oz porterhouse steak was recommended and ordered. We were so eager to have a great meal when the steak was served in less than 10 minutes. When we cut into it we discovered it was rare, we ordered medium. Then the overcooked blooming onion came. We asked Nathan to please ask the cook to recook us a new blooming onion. We lost our appetite when the meal came back again. The steak was overcooked and burned, and the onion was still overcooked. During the whole dinner, the waiter (Nathan, he is a rock star) was great, nice and polite. He helped us to convey our message to the cook. Unfortunately, the cook team seemed to not understand what we wanted. And it ended up ruining our meal, and our 26th anniversary dinner. I called the manager, John Tutek the next day to discuss the meal we had. He was great, friendly, and professional. I explained to him what happened. I asked John if it was possible if I could have a refund. Immediately he agreed to not only refund the full amount of 58.59, he even put $60.00 even back on my credit card! While solving the issue, John said he used to work at the outback near the Puente Hills Mall as a waiter for years. Instantly, we were connected. My wife and I have been going there for years, and most of the time we celebrated our anniversaries there as well. Unfortunately, after COVID hit the restaurant was closed down. We were devastated. John told me that he cried along with all of the other employees when that location was closed down. All of the employees were very friendly, and when we went there it had the feeling of a family restaurant. John is extremely passionate about his job and takes it seriously. He is very personable, we spent 30 minutes chatting about marriage, anniversaries, and movies. On top of everything else, John decided to send me a gift card! I was very touched. We really enjoy eating at outback, it is one of our favorite restaurants. We appreciate the company, and all of the excellent employees. We would like to thank everybody for their hard work. (I used to be a server and I know it is an extremely demanding job). Thank you for your commitment...

Outback Steakhouse. We took a to-go bag home that said "no rules" on it and oh boy. That's how I felt about the food. No rules. Felt like cooks were able to give it to us however they wanted. My partner's daughter ordered a kids well done steak for herself. Both of the sides were burnt to a crisp which makes no sense because the steak was so small. It should've been easy to cook it thoroughly without burning it. Then my partner and I shared a chimichurri steak. When I put the steak in my mouth, I had to spit it back out. The aroma on the steak was strong. I thought I was eating lamb for a second. The picture shows a medium temperature but what we received was medium-well which makes me think the steak must've been old and oxidized from the taste and lack of redness. I assume it was paired with the strong chimichurri flavor to cover up the aroma but it was pretty bad. We had a potato soup too that was just too salty. The wait time for our food was 15+ minutes which would've made sense if they were cooking fat steaks but it was just a small kids steak and a skinny chimichurri steak. I came here hoping for an experience considering the steak house prices and boy did I get one. It's places like this that make me glad I learned how to cook so I don't have to spend money for overpriced food that wasn't good. This company may get away with selling their food to the older/geriatric crowd because their taste buds are going and they constantly have bowel issues anyways so how are they gonna know. But if you're an adult trying to find some decent food, this spot is NOT it. Our server was awesome and very attentive. The atmosphere was awesome. But Jesus that food was a HUGE disappointment. If you have any self respect for yourself and what your body is ingesting then please do yourself a favor and DONT COME HERE. I really hope they're following FIFO protocols and labeling the food correctly.

Also,I have enough time to write this down because I'm stuck on the toilet thanks to their food....

Our host Mikey was very attentive and polite. The restaurant was clean and the food was good. Our server Andrew was just okay. He was apparently the only server so service was slow. Update: Before we left the restaurant we ordered a desert to go. Our server Andrew brought the desert but it was not the specific one we had asked for in our order. Andrew became argumentative, and insisted the one he brought was what we ordered. We said it was not what we wanted and said we would pay to get what we actually wanted. We could see his expression that he was annoyed and again insisted he brought what we had ordered. He took the desert and said he would be right back. About 10 minutes later he brought us the desert and the check. As we were starting to exit Andrew came out near the bar area in front of the bartender and 2 booths full of other customers and again engaged us. He spoke very loudly saying he wasn’t arguing with us, insisting he was”nice to us”. He told us don’t come back. Of course we were taken by surprise for a server to speak to us so rudely and so loudly in front of other customers and staff. It was embarrassing. Even the bartender apologized for Andrew’s behavior. We frequent Outback and have had great food, service and experiences many times. If not for the long history of good experiences, we would probably never go back. We spoke to the manager who was understanding, helpful and apologized for his employee’s behavior. Even though we had one terrible experience with a rude server, we will continue to dine at Outback in the future. We have all had a bad day at work before but this server was way...